Stanley Farmer fancies himself a film-maker, and dreams of making a horror movie about people spending the night in a basement in order to win a cash prize. During the course of the night, the maniac running the competition will subject his 'guests' to torture.
After acquiring a shooting location, Stanly puts out a casting call. Little do the applicants know that Stanly will be making his film the authentic way, and by the time they turn up for audition, they've already been cast...
'Do You Like My Basement' started life as a $5,000 Kickstarter project but as best I can tell, the movie was mostly finished before the crowd funding drive started, so whether or not that $5,000 represents the whole budget I couldn't say, but looking at the movie I certainly hope so.
Filmed on DV, and mostly in first person (with the remaining shots being filmed by cameras set up around Stanly's house) it wears it's low budget on its sleeve, which is fine; found footage, particularly found footage about a guy trying to make a movie with no money, is one place where lack of funds really isn't an issue.
So what of those things where money is no issue? A great scrip, for instance, costs as little to write as a poor one, and an unknown actor who can act will work for just as little as an unknown who can't?
Sadly, the news isn't great.
On the acting front, the cast is variable at best, with the only actor I would class as convincing is the Chinese girl who's mother tags along to her audition.
On the script front, there are simply too many holes in the form of opportunities for Stanley to get caught. Yes, the opening scene establishes how he gets his temporary address, but he could really only hope to hold onto it for a few days; on top of that, surely at least some of the aspiring actors thought to tell someone where they were going? There's also a redundant scene in which Stanley buys a number of disposable mobile phones, which are never mentioned again.
Aside from using the found footage format (which, by the way, I am SO over right now, but that's a personal gripe) the film-maker work well within their budgetary limitation in one other important regard; effects. Having most of the gore happen off screen may make little narrative sense given the snuff-film set-up, but it's far less jarring than showing the violence and having it look fake would have been!
All that's really left to mention is the ending which, while it features one of the movie's most interesting set-prices, is far too abrupt, and is followed by those "what happened next" cards common to 'true stories' - these cards were the only on-screen hint at the comedy mentioned on the movie's Kickstarter page.
All in all an admirable effort given the budget, and the crew's inexperience, but not a movie I can recommend spending your precious time with.
Disclaimer:
If you look through the archives, you'll see that I've been using "Bought from Poundland" as a tag since at least 2011.
At the end of October 2013 I decided that all of my 2014 movies would be purchased from Poundland, and began buying up horror movies, to ensure I would have enough come October 2014.
In March 2014 I took a part time job at Poundland.
In accordance with the companies social media policy, in September 2014 I contacted Poundland's social media team to check that I would be okay to carry on with my plan to use the "bought from Poundland" tag.
I have been given the go-ahead on condition that I make the following clear:
All the reviews on this blog are entirely the opinion of Will Tingle, the reviews are not endorsed by Poundland in any way and (as should be obvious from some of the more scathing ones) are certainly not reviews I have been paid to write.
In short: The views expressed in this blog are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Poundland or it's owners, shareholders, or management.
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